First published 2023
In rural Oklahoma, the Harlan family carries generations of unspoken violence like a genetic inheritance. When patriarch Robert Harlan begins documenting his family's brutal history—a sprawling record of revenge killings and rural justice predating statehood—his teenage daughter Sarah discovers the manuscript changes everything she understands about her lineage. As Sarah reads through pages detailing brutal frontier retributions and familial vendettas, she realizes the book isn't just history: it's a potential blueprint for future violence that threatens her own generation. With each page turned, the boundary between historical record and active threat becomes dangerously blurred. Someone in the family wants certain stories to remain buried—and will go to extreme lengths to protect those secrets.
Genres: family, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Oklahoma, Rural America
Period: 20th Century, 21st Century
116 pages · Paperback · Lamar University Literary Press
Content warnings: abuse, violence